There is no evidence that using social media is driving an epidemic of mental illness and blaming it can distract from effectively responding to the real causes
and rising hysteria could distract us from tackling the real causes.” — https://www.nature.com/... [image] Philip N Cohen / @philipncohen@mastodon.social : “the book's repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children's brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science.” https://www.nature.com/... Omar Wasow / @owasow@mastodon.social : “The plots presented throughout this book will be useful in teaching my students the fundamentals of causal inference, and how to avoid making up stories by simply looking at trend lines.” https://www.nature.com/... Chris Simpson / @chris_e_simpson@hachyderm.io : Damning review of Jonathan Haidt's book that blames social media for the rise in teen anxiety and depression — Candice L. Odgers argues that correlation does not imply causation, that there is no evidence for a causal connection, and that focusing on this will detract from clearly identifying and dealing with the actual causes … Bluesky: Janet Yaw / @janety.bsky.social : Completely disagree. [embedded post] X: Rory Cellan-Jones / @ruskin147 : https://www.nature.com/... The hot new book saying smartphones and social media are warping our kids' minds will sell like hot cakes because it speaks to parents' worries - but it's bad science says this review “telling stories that are unsupported by research”. @jeffjarvis : Thank you, @candice_odgers, for your review of Haidt's latest. In an entire book (and I have one coming out partially in response to him), I do not do as well as you did here. “Serious claims require serious evidence,” indeed. https://www.nature.com/... Louis Anslow / @louisanslow : Nature goes in on ‘The Anxious Generation’ for its scientific populism. https://www.nature.com/... [image] @basedbeffjezos : It's Decel mindset, not social media itself, that is the problem. The cultural software, not the interconnect infrastructure. The solution is to use social media to spread optimism. LinkedIn: Candice Odgers : It may be time to rethink how we support young people online and offline versus simply shut off their social media. … Stephen Schueller : I don't think technology will solve all of our problems, and I'd be naive to think it doesn't cause some, but we need to have hard conversations … Forums: r/Futurology : The great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness? The evidence is equivocal on whether screen time is to blame …
Context & Ripple Effects
The review joins a long-running dispute over whether population-level mental-health trends can be attributed to platforms. Earlier coverage called for social media’s societal effects to be studied with the rigor of a “crisis discipline”, while critiques have warned against drawing causal stories from broad trend lines.
It also pushes back against a narrative sharpened by reporting on the costs associated with a smartphone-based childhood. The stakes extend beyond a book debate: parents and lawmakers are already weighing social media’s role in youth mental-health harms.
First-order effects
- Haidt’s argument that digital technology is driving a youth mental-health epidemic faces a direct methodological challenge from Odgers and other critics, who say the evidence does not establish causation.
- The review shifts immediate attention toward the underlying causes of teen anxiety and depression, rather than treating social-media use as a settled primary explanation.
Second-order effects
- Parents, advocates, and policymakers considering platform-focused interventions face greater pressure to distinguish correlational evidence from causal evidence—an issue central to the debate among US lawmakers and parents over teen suicide.
- Researchers studying platform effects gain a clearer incentive to use designs that can separate population trends, individual harms, and alternative causes, rather than relying on parallel time series.
Third-order effects
- If this evidentiary standard holds, youth-safety policy may move from single-cause narratives toward interventions evaluated against multiple drivers of mental health.
- The broader conflict will increasingly be over what level and type of evidence should justify restrictions on digital products, rather than over whether online experiences can ever harm particular users.
The trend: The story is part of a shift from broad claims about social media’s societal damage toward more demanding causal standards for platform and youth-mental-health policy.